5 years later this was his radio message to Minnesota, just months before Pearl Harbor:

"Our thoughts have taken frequent flight to your Twin Cities on the upper reaches of the Mississippi River, father of streams, where We had once the pleasure of visiting our venerable brother, your devoted Archbishop - We seemed to see in vision thousands, yes tens of thousands , of Our dear children reverently, frequently receiving from the consecrated hands of God's priests the body and blood of their Lord and Master, their God and Redeemer. The nations of the world are there: there is no people of Europe but has children of its own blood among you, Asia, Africa, Australia; and We see Our dear Negro children; and Our dear Indians are there; all partaking of the one victim of Golgotha, all entering into union with the Godhead through Christ Jesus, who then abides in them through His Holy Spirit. 'O Sacrament of tender love! O sign of unity! O bond of charity!' exclaimed St. Augustine, and the zealous Apostle of the Gentiles, whose honored name your city has borne for just one hundred years, has taught a divinely inspired truth in these words: 'For we, being many, are one bread, one body, all that partake of one bread' (I Corinthians 10:17 [...] Yes, the Sacrament of our altars is a source of union which transcends all the accidents of history, all. the diversifying traits and peculiarities which have divided our scattered human family into different groups. It reconsecrates, it elevates, it sanctifies that union which our common nature and our universal destiny proclaim. It purifies that love which every human heart should cherish for all its fellow-men - that love which quickens our zeal to come to the defense of spiritual and moral rights of our fellow man [Jews] - it deepens that love and steadies it, so that no withering blast may make it droop and die [...] Early explorers record in their relations their utter amazement at the mighty current that sweeps down the Mississippi River. There is a stronger current of black paganism sweeping over peoples today, carrying along in its onward rush newspapers, magazines, moving pictures, breaking the barriers of self-respect and decency, undermining the foundations of Christian culture and education."

-Address of His Holiness, Pope Pius XII over Vatican City radio station HVJ on Thursday, June 26, 1941.

Tuesday, October 22, 2013

"Putting on the garb of religion, the seminarian will cherish the dress of the Church not as an antiquated, if revered, costume but as the garb of the new Adam, the dress of Christ, significant of the death of worldly tastes and the life of virtue within."

Sunday, October 20, 2013

"It would stand thereafter as a memorial to the great Congress of American Catholics in which sacrifice had been the central theme. People were gathering outside the closed doors of the church when the group of clerics with the consecrating Cardinal came from the sanctuary and went out the central door to circle the building thrice with prayer and the sprinkling of holy water. Returning within, the pavement of the middle aisle was marked from end to end in diagonal lines with the letters of the Greek and Roman alphabets. The walls were anointed and the consecration candles lit before the permanent crosses that mark the consecrated church, and then the high altar was consecrated. When the latter point had been reached other bishops and archbishops proceeded to the seven other altars of the church, each of which was to be consecrated by a separate prelate at the same time the Cardinal consecrated the main table of sacrifice. These who so assisted were Their Excellencies Archbishop Cicognani, Apostolic Delegate to the United States, Archbishop Murray of St. Paul, Bishop Lawler of Rapid City, Bishop Morrison of Antigonish, N.S., Bishop Kelley of Oklahoma City and Tulsa, Bishop Kelly of Winona, and Bishop Muench of Fargo. At the conclusion of the consecration ceremony, a pontifical Mass was celebrated by the Ordinary of the Archdiocese at which he also preached. A dinner at the Curtis Hotel afterwards was tendered to those who had taken part in the consecration and Mass."

-Ninth National Eucharistic Congress (Official History and Record, p. 48).